Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/89

23 of the meat they stole; but many hundreds of them paid the penalty of their lives for their unceremonious effrontery.

The only other members of the feathered tribe which we saw in the Gobi were the sand-grouse and Mongol larks. Both these kinds are peculiarly characteristic of Mongolia.

The sand-grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus), discovered and described at the end of the last century by the celebrated Pallas, is distributed over the whole of Central Asia as far as the Caspian Sea, and is occasionally met with as far south as Tibet. This bird, called Boilduru by the Mongols, and Sadji by the Chinese, only inhabits the desert, where it feeds on the seeds of different grasses (dwarf wormwood, sulhir, &c.), upon which it entirely depends for food in winter. In the cold season vast numbers flock together in the desert of Ala-shan, attracted by the seeds of the sulhir (Agriophyllum Gobicum), of which they are very fond. In summer some of them appear in Trans-Baikalia, where they breed. Their eggs, three in number, are laid on the bare ground, where the hen bird sits staunchly, although the bird is in ordinary circumstances timid. In winter they are often compelled by the cold and